Getting Your Resume Past the Robots

More companies are using resume screening software, in response to the higher number of resumes submitted. The first strategy in getting your resume read–by a human–is understanding how these programs work.

Your resume is run through a parser, which removes the styling from the resume and breaks the text down into recognized words or phrases.

The parser then sorts that content into different categories: Education, contact info, skills, and work experience.

The employer’s desired skills or keywords are matched against the results from above.

Your resume is scored on relevancy—using semantic matching against the employer’s search terms and your years of experience.

So, clearly, it’s vital to include relevant text in your resume—but not to indiscriminately load up your resume with words from the job description. The best results come from a SEO type strategy (more on that later). (Besides, many job applicants try to be clever, and will be using the same keywords in their resumes.)